Much has been written on Congressional investigations. The theoretical questions connected with them have been explored. Their place in our governmental system has been reasonably well established.

Recent developments give a new perspective. The high point of Congressional investigations, so far as the previous literature was concerned, came in a time of stagnating major party politics. There was an attitude of “stand by” on the part of the Administration; defeatism pervaded the official minority. Conditions in the Senate, however, permitted the dissident Republicans, in combination with the Democrats, to constitute an intermittent majority for purposes of criticism if not of construction. When malfeasance and misfeasance were allowed to creep into administration, meeting little resistance from within, the check had to come from without, and it came in the form of Congressional investigations.

Within recent months, increased attention has been given the possibility of utilizing interstate compacts to cope with problems that transcend the boundary lines of given states. A Council of State Governments has been created to promote such interstate agreements, and several states have established commissions to facilitate coöperation with this council. Compacts have been advocated as solutions not only for the problem of criminal extradition, but also for such problems as the control of the extraction of natural resources (e.g., coal, oil, gas, water supplies, and water power) and the conservation of their supply, and the regulation of milk prices, of the conditions of labor, and of the production and distribution of the services of certain classes of public utilities.

A study of the financing of the 1936 campaign is particularly interesting since it may show what, if any, effect the “New Deal” program has had upon political alignments. Eventually, any radical shift in the support of a political party must be reflected in the sources from which it draws its campaign funds.

In 1928, both major parties depended largely upon bankers and manufacturers for their contributions, although the Republicans received a larger proportion of their fund from manufacturers than did their rivals. In 1932, although the proportion of the Democratic fund coming from manufacturers dropped appreciably, Roosevelt's promises of a New Deal had no apparent effect upon the support of the bankers, who contributed as heavily as in 1928.

As was pointed out a year ago in this Review, the Supreme Court was able to deal with the cases involving the New Deal which came before it during its 1934 term without any striking enlargement of judicial power and without the announcement of any novel constitutional doctrine. The N.R.A., the Gold Clauses, the Farm Bankruptcy Act, were dealt with by the familiar processes of deciding whether Congress had actually exercised a power not granted to it by the Constitution, or had exercised a granted power in a forbidden way. The New Deal issues which came to the Court during the 1935 term were quite as far-reaching in significance and were certainly not of a routine variety. They involved, in some cases, constitutional clauses never before interpreted by the Court. Some of the federal laws under attack were obviously exercises of delegated powers, but at the same time, they exercised delegated powers for purposes which were novel and which had been commonly supposed not to be within the reach of federal authority. In dealing with laws of this type, the Court brought forward and established as a working implement of constitutional construction the so-called doctrine of “dual federalism.”

Origin. The Rural Electrification Administration began as one of the “temporary” and “emergency” units in Roosevelt's collection of alphabetical agencies under executive order 7037 of May 11, 1935. The expressed purpose of the President was to promote the generation, transmission, and distribution of electricity in rural areas. Morris L. Cooke, noted management engineer who had served as a member of the Power Authority of New York when Roosevelt was governor, was chosen administrator. Money for loans to coöperatives, public bodies, and private companies was made available from relief funds, with the stipulation that borrowers must use at least 90 per cent relief labor in construction work. All money was to be repaid; no part of the federal funds was to be used for grants or subsidies.

Something more aggressive than the laws of probability determined the fate of state constitutional amendments last year. Yea-sayers dominated nay-sayers in the ratio of three to two. Ninety amendments of the 158 under consideration in 35 states received the electoral imprimatur. In this general mood of acceptance, only California was steadfastly negativistic, rejecting 16 of the 20 proposed changes. Louisianians, on the other hand, took practically all that was offered—with unselective enthusiasm approving 33 of the 34 amendments on their imposing ballots.

In 1890, Mr. Edward C. Mason published in his monograph, The Veto Power, the results of his investigation of presidential vetoes down to 1889. In the present note, it is proposed to supplement the earlier study by presenting a short analysis of vetoes between 1889 and 1934.

By 1889, the direct veto had been applied to 435 measures. Of this number, however, over 200 were pension bills vetoed during Cleveland's first administration. Of pocket vetoes, there had been only 16. From 1889 to the close of the Seventy-third Congress in June, 1934, the direct veto was exercised 235 times, and 292 pocket vetoes were recorded. In the hundred-year period from 1789 to 1889, 29 vetoes were overridden by Congress; in the 45 years from 1889 to 1934, 22 met reversal. This increase in the number and proportion of vetoes is attributable to the increased amount and broadened scope of legislation resulting from the complexity of our social and political life.

Prior to the National Revolution of 1933, one of the foremost postulates guiding the conduct of German civil servants was that of political neutrality. The permanent public personnel—national, state, and local—was to consider itself, in the apt formulation of the Weimar constitution, “servants of the whole people, not of a party.” Although imprudent legislative and executive measures taken during the republican era weakened rather than strengthened the principle of neutrality, it was effectively upheld by the disciplinary courts. Indirectly, the professional tenet of non-partisanship facilitated German bureaucracy's identification with a broadly conceived constitutionalism. At a time when the National Socialist vote had become the largest in national elections, organizers for the new creed still made least headway among the government personnel. Statistics published in 1936 disclose the fact that less than four per cent of all civil servants joined the national Socialist party before Hitler's rise to the chancellorship. As the incoming Reich cabinet was not slow to recognize the “impossibility” of large-scale displacements, it resorted to transitional regulations in order to weed out overtly heterogeneous elements.

“Practically every volume of the United States Statutes contains one or more acts or joint resolutions of Congress authorizing action by the President in respect of subjects affecting foreign relations, which either leave the exercise of the power to his unrestricted judgment, or provide a standard far more general than that which has always been considered requisite with regard to domestic affairs.” Thus did Mr. Justice Sutherland summarize the legal precedents for the President's actions in imposing an embargo on arms shipments to certain belligerent countries in South America, after Congress had delegated to him discretionary authority in such matters. This is more than a succinct historical summary. It is the first case in which the dicta of the Court has made clear that sharp line of distinction between the Chief Executive's discretionary powers in foreign affairs and those in internal matters.

Of the various proposals embodied in the recently published Report of the President's Committee on Administrative Management, that calling for extension of the merit system has received most publicity. This publicity has been generally favorable, and, in the opinion of the present writer, undiscriminating. Everyone agrees that appointments to the public service should be based upon merit of some kind. The pertinent questions are: First, should the sort of merit represented by party service be given any consideration in the public service? Second, assuming that it should not, how is the sort of merit connoted by efficiency in doing the particular job assigned to be secured? Any proposal to extend the merit system which fails to tackle these questions unequivocally is hardly entitled to unqualified support.

Taking note of the constantly increasing number of persons who were seeking nomination to public office in Wayne county, Michigan, a special election laws commission (1930) recommended a change in the laws governing the primary. The recommendation, accompanied by a draft of a bill, proposed to make it somewhat more difficult in that county for candidates to qualify for a place upon the primary ballots. The legislative response to this recommendation was an innocuous amendment providing for the deposit of a small filing fee as an alternative to the nominating petition. However, primary abuses during the depression years convinced the legislature that more drastic action was necessary, and in 1935 the election laws, as applied to Wayne county, were again amended abolishing the nominating petition and substituting the filing fee for “candidates for county office or office in the state legislature.” A similar provision was imposed by charter amendment for municipal offices in the city of Detroit.

President Roosevelt's message of January 12 urging a thorough reorganization of the administrative branch of the federal government was greeted by a Congress undoubtedly astounded at the number and revolutionary character of the reforms advocated. Among the suggestions around which opposition has crystallized is the proposed redistribution of the General Accounting Office's functions relating to accounting, expenditure control, and auditing between a more circumscribed “General Auditing Office” and the Treasury Department. It is unfortunate that the benefits to be derived from this reorganization are not widely recognized. On the contrary, the move easily lends itself to characterization as an arrogation of further power on the part of the Chief Executive and an attempted removal of the administrative branch of the government from any effective control by Congress. In the words of Senator Vandenberg, "it would put a muzzle on the only watch-dog that's left around here.” Publicity is given to the “proposed abolition of the Comptroller-General's office,” as though this independent critic of Administration expenditures were to be done away with entirely. Actually, under the President's plan provision is made for an independent audit which could be made more effective than the confused control exercised by the Comptroller-General under the present arrangement. In addition, the recognition of accounting and expenditure control as fundamental elements of management would bring into the federal system an increased efficiency in administration which is sadly needed.

Some students of metropolitan problems have suggested that the granting of extraterritorial powers to municipalities by state legislatures may provide a temporary integration of governmental agencies within a metropolitan region. Inevitably, however, the development of such powers in any extensive fashion must lead to additional confusion in the already tangled web of jurisdictions. The problems of relationship of governmental units are simply multiplied. This is illustrated by the experience of cities in California. A wide range of power has been given by the state constitution and general laws whereby the cities may undertake public utility projects within and without their municipal boundaries as deemed necessary. The courts, for the most part, have been liberal in interpreting extramural powers of cities undertaken both (a) as municipal corporations providing service, and (b) as governing units exercising the police powers. A significant addition to municipal powers has been made by interpretation of the constitutional provision that cities shall have exclusive jurisdiction in “municipal affairs.” In an early case that established a controlling doctrine, the court said: “The supplying of water to outside territory, being necessarily a matter incidental to the main purpose of supplying water to its own inhabitants, is as much a municipal affair … as is the main purpose, which is conceded to be such, and therefore charter provisions relating thereto prevail over general laws, if inconsistent therewith.” In similar matters, the cities become free agents under freeholder charters except as they encounter the jurisdiction or interest of other cities.

On August 12, President Roosevelt nominated Senator Hugo L. Black of Alabama to be an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court. On receipt of the message, Senator Ashurst moved for its immediate consideration on the ground that “whenever the Executive honors this body by nominating a member thereof, that nomination is confirmed without reference to a committee, for the obvious reason that no amount of investigation or consideration by a committee of the Senate could disclose any new fact or shed any new light upon the character, attainments, and ability of the nominee, because if we do not know him after long service with him, no one will ever know him.”

As in previous lists, mention is here made only of units specifically authorized by law or established by the President by executive order under general authority vested in him.

Advisory Committee of the Coast Guard Academy. Created by Public No. 38, 75th Congress, approved April 16, 1937, to examine the course of instruction and to advise the Secretary of the Treasury in regard thereto. Committee will consist of five “persons of distinction in the field of education,” who shall be appointed by the Secretary of the Treasury and who shall serve without pay, but who shall be reimbursed for actual expenses of travel.

Quite generally recognized is the fact that rural local government in the United States has failed to keep pace with the improvements in governmental organization and procedure which have been made in the national, state, and municipal fields. In 1917, the county was referred to as the “dark continent” of American politics—an appellation which might have been applied with equal propriety to the rural subdivisions of counties known as towns or townships. Today, after two decades, it must be admitted that rural government still lags in its rate of progress; yet it is not the unexplored jungle of twenty years ago. In several states, comprehensive surveys have been made with a view to reorganization, and during the past few years the depression has served to stimulate local-government consciousness where previously little interest was displayed in local affairs. In increasing numbers, attempts are being made, in some instances through constitutional amendment but more often by statutory enactment, to render our local areas, organization, and functions more adequate to present-day needs. Various extra-legal developments are taking place also. It is the purpose of this article to summarize the more significant developments in the field of county and township government during the years 1935 and 1936. While not all of these developments, when measured by principles of sound public administration, can be said to be in the direction of progress, a definite trend in that direction is clearly discernible.

For some time, the growing stature of political science as an independent social science has been a notable feature in American universities. Yet, up to the present time, the categories of this new field of scientific endeavor have not found their way into the indexing departments of libraries, nor have they been recognized by indexers of other collections. Even the editors of encyclopedias, people of great learning and ability, have omitted some of the most significant topics of political science, because of the lack of any accepted index indicating the range of the field and focusing attention upon its primary categories. The American Political Science Review itself is confronted with the problem of a suitable subject-index. The growing complexity of all kinds of materials bearing upon the work of political scientists, and more particularly the increasing mass of public documents, has become more and more baffling. Even the skillful indexers of the Congressional Record, for example, seem unaware of the major topics of interest for political science, and thus no sign-posts of the usual kind have been made available to workers in our field.

As a means of settling labor disputes, strikes benefit no element in the community. Their financial costs to workers, industry, capital, consumers, government, and society cannot be accurately totaled but may be amply demonstrated. Strikes are costly not only in terms of money, but also because they prejudice just and intelligent solutions of the essential issues of wages, working conditions, and industrial control. Solutions which are compelled by violence or coercion are adequate only by unlikely coincidence.

The establishment of equitable rules whereby the constitutional rights of affected interests may be protected against arbitrary invasion from laws adopted by the electorate under the reserved legislative powers of the initiative and referendum remains the most important procedural question in the whole field of direct legislation. In reserving the authority to initiate constitutional and statutory measures without the approval or consent of the popular assembly, and to enact such measures through the medium of a popular referendum, the popular sovereign has created a mechanic of legislation coördinate in authority with the legislature. But in erecting barriers against fraudulent and corrupt practices upon the part of those engaged in the initiation of proposed measures, the state constitutions and laws present the possibility of obstructionist tactics by opponents of the proposals and undue delay in the presentation of the measures to the electorates for decision. The recent political imbroglio in Oklahoma over the adoption of an old-age-pensions amendment to the state constitution emphasizes the difficulties of reconciling these conflicting interests.

Calling for the final abolition of the spoils system through the substitution of career service, Franklin D. Roosevelt has come forward with the boldest, the most courageous, and the most constructive step in his career. This program is part of his plan for the reorganization of the administrative structure and the fiscal controls of the government. There may be minor debatable issues. However, the comprehensive program is a weaving together of the best constructive thought of the past generation with regard to American government.